Have you ever tried to go in one direction, but something keeps getting in your way and you do nothing about it? Recently, I was weeding my flower beds when I received a text from a friend. I read her text and responded. It was difficult because I still had my garden gloves on. For some reason, I didn’t think it was necessary to remove them. Do you know how difficult it is to text with Garden Gloves on? I really thought I was typing the right letters. I knew what I intended to write, but the word “what” ended up as “wbat” and the word “important” ended up as “iomportamlt”. So as I typed, “you need to decide what’s important”, it got me thinking.. What is important and what roadblocks do we allow to keep getting in our way. I had a ten minute text conversation with Garden gloves on and kept getting frustrated that the letters that I intended to type were not coming out as I wanted… So take the gloves off, make it easy for yourself, I thought… but no, I kept them on and kept retyping or sending words spelled incorrectly. (FYI – I am a person that spell checks her texts. I don’t like abbreviated words or misspelled words)
So, why do I keep the gloves on? Why not take them off and make it easy for myself? Do I like the challenge? Am I just too lazy to take the gloves off and on? Or is that I want to pretend the gloves aren’t even there? I think I want to pretend the obstacle isn’t there. Because once you acknowledge the obstacle, you have to do something about it. I had to get the gardening done and still had to respond to the text. I ignored what was blocking me and chose to not deal with.
So it got me thinking, what else do I let block me and why? I started a list. I answered these questions:
What do I want?
What blocks me?
How do I change it?
Nothing on the list was shocking to me. I did notice that what blocks me the most is fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of fear…. Fear seems to be my garden glove in life. I let it block me. I let it stop me.
I received an e-mail recently from a new acquaintance. She had just parachuted out of a plane for the first time. One of her “aha moments” she listed in her e-mail was, “Things are rarely as scary as you imagine they will be.” So true, I thought. It got me thinking of my vacation last winter. I tried new things. The first was that I went on a jet ski. Yes, I was like a little Granny when I started and I went very slow but after I felt comfortable, I picked up speed. I still didn’t do anything too radical, due to my fear of being thrown off into the ice cold ocean (which happened to my husband) but I did enjoy a little speed…
The other thing I did was that I parasailed. Now that is something I never thought I would do. I am not a fan of heights, so between that and the fact that I was over the ocean, it was shocking to me that I did it. I did both of these things and although I was scared to do both of them, in the end, neither was a scary as I thought it would be.
When I was on vacation it seemed much easier for me to take off my garden gloves. I didn’t let my fears block me from what I wanted to do. I need to take off my garden gloves. This will be work, but in the end, it will be worth it…..
What are your garden gloves?
And are you ready to take them off?
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